


viii; The Stories We Tell Ourselves in the Dark

by Theo_Thaur



Series: 31 Days of TUA Whump [8]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Number Five | The Boy-centric, One Shot, Whump, Whumptober 2020, Young Number Five | The Boy, but only (hopefully) because this is a younger five, no plot just stream of consciousness, probably a bit OOC, the definition of overworking yourself as a coping mechanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:13:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26919397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theo_Thaur/pseuds/Theo_Thaur
Summary: Whumptober 2020 submission. No 8. "WHERE DID EVERYBODY GO?": “Don’t Say Goodbye”, Isolation.------Nearly two months into the (first) apocalypse, and Five has a lot on his mind, but he chooses every day to track down what tore his family away from him rather than mourn them.
Relationships: Dolores & Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy)
Series: 31 Days of TUA Whump [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951234
Kudos: 6
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	viii; The Stories We Tell Ourselves in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGERS: some gore/death, grief, appetite suppressing, mention/implication of drugs.

_viii; The Stories We Tell Ourselves in the Dark_

It was the sort of thing Reginald would probably cackle at, but even after making an unintended jump to the end of the world, after it was his desire to push forward that ruined Five… he still kept moving. He craved the fast pace that travel brought with it, the way that he didn't have to think about his other problems if he searched for something he couldn't even name. In the very beginning, he'd been running away, just like in 2002. Running, from fires he could never douse, from faces he couldn't forget. Anywhere but _that_ city was better. Looking for what had caused the mess was the only thread he had, the only sense of control even if the amount of evidence he'd collected was frustratingly low. He'd taken to tallying the days as they passed, writing personal journal entries in-between lines and lines of phone book text. He'd have to leave the Yellow Pages behind sooner or later, because that alone made the wagon wheels sink into sand and dirt, but Five wasn't ready to let go. He knew it was silly to want to hold onto first person accounts of his _own_ half-baked philosophy, but just shy of two months in and he found re-reading himself offered a dynamic perspective. It kept him from feeling like he was actually the only person that felt the way he did, and saving the 'knowledge' seemed important.

On the subject of frivolous, useless things, Five had recently found himself a companion. Well, not a companion exactly. More of a glorified scarecrow. Five didn't have much in the way of food stores, but on his first search through a mostly demolished market to find things that he could eat, scavenger birds had picked his discoveries over while he slept. One time had been enough to cause him to start adapting, and though he had come across a box since discovering the mannequin, he couldn't get rid of it. Over the span of a couple of weeks he'd grown somewhat attached to the presence, having dubbed it Dolores --which of course, quite literally meant sorrow, sorrow at the loss of _real_ humanity. A couple of times, Five found himself voicing his inner monologue to her, which in the absence of people, had evolved into a series of comments and tasks he set for himself, voiced word-by-word in his head rather than through abstract thought. One of his most common thoughts: _you need to keep searching for a one-eyed corpse._

The daily treks he made were exhausting, but Five was pushing through the worst of it. By the end of every day, there was a red welt on either palm (he alternated hands) from having to drag the wagon behind himself. But, like the blisters he'd gotten on the soles of his feet after day in and day out travel, they would heal. He would get stronger, more resilient, no matter the cost. It was this headstrongness that kept him going past the aching, past the ashy air that threatened to choke him as he ran from the corpses of his family and towards a solution, because one still had to be out there.

It was a big frightening world, but he'd turn every last stone over before he could let go of hope that he wouldn't get back to 2002, before he could truly accept the deaths of his family as more than temporary and circumstantial. 

And then there was Vanya. It hadn't occurred to Five immediately, her absence. On _his_ first day of 2019, it had been much easier to fixate on the faces he saw, not the ones he didn't. But on the quiet nights where everything krept in, it had come to him. It was possible she'd died in the years before 2019, that with the rest of the Hargreeves --with the apparent exception of Reginald and Ben--, she'd gotten buried, but unlike the others, _properly_ buried instead of crushed under rebar and rubble. There was a chance she'd left the academy, that made sense as on technicality, in the ways Reginald cared for, she was abysmal. So perhaps Vanya had died somewhere else in the world. Five held onto a slight hope that she was alive, albeit a hope that was slowly being suffocated the longer he spent alone, the more he got used to passing unknown bodies, shriveled up like roadkill. Even without counting the days, watching as the bodies around him in any given area slowly decomposed --having all died around the same time--, served as a gruesome indication of the passing time. It was his greatest fear that he would pass a body and recognize it as Vanya's, a fear that had led him to scrutinizing even somewhat familiar female bodies a little longer, deciding it couldn't be her, before going back and forth on it weeks after he'd passed the body. Finally finding her would be a relief in some ways, he was as compelled to finally have an answer as he was compelled to never know. More likely, she was too hidden under buildings to be found; a needle in a haystack. Eventually the rot would make it impossible to tell for sure anyways.

Nightfall was soon. A map he'd obtained told him that he was approaching another city, another crack at trying to get worthwhile items that came at the cost of spotting more decomposing flesh. As usual, Five burnt the wick at both hands, unable to stop himself from moving until it was nearly too dark. He made his 'tent', which was a slightly torn tarp attached to two sticks that he set into the flat, sandy ground like stakes. Although having been following a road all day, he couldn't bring himself to pitch a tent on the road, it just didn't seem right. He'd settled off to the side, although not so close as to be in a ditch. Taking care to prop Dolores up, he ate dinner, which was canned corn he had to bang open with a rock, and a portion of instant coffee mixed into the remains of his canteen. He didn't need the energy, but he'd fallen back onto having it as a way to mute his hunger out, after discovering that drinking it in the morning had made him less hungry as well as, for a time, faster. Five had never tried coffee before 2019, seeing as Reginald had never wanted members of the Umbrella Academy tainting themselves with any kind of a substance --ironic considering what Klaus had gotten accustomed to doing, which was something everyone else knew about but didn't say. 

Having dinner, he eyed Dolores in the falling light. Slightly arched eyebrows and the same makeup as always, it looked back. Five smiled to himself before looking away. She did look a little inquisitive --or it, rather. On nights when the ash settled, it was gorgeous to watch the sun set and enjoy the ground beginning to cool. He'd learned that there wasn't any efficiency in cutting through cities or other densely populated areas, without the intent of scavenging. It saved him no time navigating unstable wreckage and trying to decide where to put his weight.

_A week into his 2019, and Five had been combing through the city still, looking for Vanya and other clues, having assumed that his family had known something more. One wrong step onto a flat, safer-looking piece between broken chunks of concrete, and the whole thing had shifted down. He'd fallen, catching himself before he could gouge his eyes out on jagged concrete, but his ankle, still swallowed up in the wreckage, had twisted underneath him as he fell, making a popping noise because he'd been unable to free it in time. Tender and swollen, he'd been forced to see the consequences of his actions, not able to go very far for a week and drawing any resources he could from the city. He'd purposefully avoided where the academy had once stood, even so. Five had still pushed his luck in the week after by moving more than he should've with a strain. That had been the first time Five had coped with an injury, without Grace there to help him through it._

The sunset pressed down against the horizon, bleeding out for the last few minutes. In such a flat, open space, only the distant, silhouetted figure of buildings intruded in on the soft golden tones. Five wished it were not so gentle to watch, because the world he was in was a terrible one that had ripped him away from the people he'd cared about most. It had no right being so pretty to look at, the light bathing the world as he marveled at it. Five had never really had the time to appreciate a sunset before. It still was in bad faith that the same delicate light had to carry across bodies of people that had once loved him, people that could no longer enjoy the setting sun. Overcome by a wave of grief, he sat with himself. At some point the stars had come, strikingly bright points in the sky, but even so, there was a darkness in the void around him, deeper than any shadow. Five retreated into the makeshift tent, curling up under a pillow he'd 'found'. An earlier version of himself would've cringed at taking a pillow that wasn't his, but it beat a bundled up cardigan, and his neck wasn't as sore in the morning.

Five did what he had done every night since the jump, focusing his mind and imaging himself standing before the gates of the Umbrella Academy, just as he'd left it when he'd stormed out that morning. His shaking fists made a buzz, distorting and tinting blue, but being met with an impossible barrier, as usual, and crackling away, sputtering. Five sighed. One of these days, he knew he'd have to stop trying --but how many times would he decide to stop trying jumps home, before he actually meant it?


End file.
